Wolves In Captivity

I finally got around to watching The Wolfpack and boy do I have feelings.

First, however, a slight disclaimer. I usually hate documentaries. My idea of what makes a good movie is as many of the following as possible:

• explosions (I really like watching things go boom)
• PRACTICAL explosions (example – my primary reason for going to see Mad Max: Fury Road BEFORE the internet latched onto it for various reasons is because I read somewhere that it had the largest practical effects budget EVER and like… that is so, so relevant to my interests)
• pretty people (which for me is a little different than for most people, but whatev, I’ve still watched my share of trash movies because of various actors)
• pretty people making out (and yet not rom-coms because I hate them unless Amy Adams is involved. I’m talking more like weirdly sweet romantic subplots in action movies here, and no I can’t think of a good example)

Needless to say, the average documentary doesn’t even register with me as a thing. My attention span is questionable at best, and I’m not gonna use it on anything involving real people. Like, ever. But rules are made to be broken, and sometimes exceptions happen. And oh what an exception it was.

For those of y’all who have not heard of it, The Wolfpack is about the Angulo brothers, six teenage boys raised in almost-total isolation in an apartment in New York. (There’s also a sister, but she’s irrelevant in the film.) Until shortly before the film picks up, the boys had never been allowed into the outside world without supervision, and even that was extremely rare. However, they were allowed one window into the unknown – movies, and lots of ’em – and that completely shapes their view of human behavior.

It’s tragic, yes, but I couldn’t look away because I understood that. I could relate because, to a lesser extent, been there done that. Sure, I got out a lot more, but just try to tell me that homeschool culture resembles the Normal World in any genuine way. Fact – it really doesn’t, and most of what I know about how the outside world works, I learned from books and TV. It’s a running joke that most of my sex-ed came from reading fanfic, and considering some of the things I have seen, I got lucky on that front. (I got the technical details in a Human Sexuality course I took towards the end of my college attempt, but thank yooou people who were writing a particular ship in the mid-2000s for informing this particular Bubble girl that women CAN want and enjoy sex.)

It’s also a running joke, albeit a slightly less funny one, that my weird background will come up in just about any social situation. When I know I’m gonna be dealing with people who don’t know about that part of me, I like to play a game called “how long before this comes up?” because it will come up. It always does. The fact that I have a very different starting point than most people is something I can’t avoid or ignore, and it changes things.

Sooo, back to Wolfpack. If you want your heart to get broken over the course of an hour and a half, you should watch it. If you want to watch teenage boys reenact scenes from a variety of classic movies from memory, you should watch it. If you want an interesting look at how isolation can shape people… you know the drill.

Life As I Feared It

Episode One of the 2016 round of “fascinatingly questionable ideas I have had” – revisiting the source of a recurrent nightmare and learning some interesting things about myself in the process.

First, a little bit of context. The source in question is a book – Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. It’s a pretty standard apocalyptic YA novel, ended up being the first in a series (the rest of which I have not read), and was published in late 2006. That would’ve made me 13 when I originally read it, approximately a year before my mother stopped censoring what I brought home from the library. (That’s another story and a post I am still several years and probably several hundred miles from writing.) For the purposes of this post, what you need to know is that paranoia was heavily involved at the time and I wasn’t allowed to read anything that might “corrupt” me in any way shape or form. With very few exceptions, that ruled out the wonderland of hellscape girl-centric YA.

And yet that book was an exception, and it was the first book I ever read in that category, and it messed me up big time. Again, I was 13 and very sheltered and had a very active imagination. This combined with a frighteningly realistic portrait of a world falling apart, written in the form of journal entries by a girl several years older than I was at the time (and therefore the height of cool), led to a nightmare that I still have about once a year. It’s always vague enough that I don’t remember details afterwards, but it’s vivid and I’ve accepted that it’ll be a ghost in my brain for a very long time to come.

A normal person, upon accepting this, would stay the heck away from whatever had caused that scenario. I, on the other hand, decided that it’s been nine years and a reread was in order because how could that possibly go wrong.

Answer – in so many more ways than I thought.

I like to credit the aforementioned genre of hellscape girl-centric YA – a term I use to describe dystopian and post-apoc novels alike, since both fit the necessary criteria – for a lot of my formative development as a person. That’s what kept me alive during high school, and looking back I can see that most of the results were positive. Okay, so I never quite figured out how to be rebellious while still being the person I generally am in my core, but I tried. I didn’t let anything get to me. (I also learned to emotionally isolate myself and put up thorns, but I’m unlearning that now. Slowly.) I needed role models, and being the Right Age just as my ideal type of YA fiction was becoming a THING basically saved me.

But there’s a twist to it, of course. It’s me, there always is. In this case, the twist is my fear of the unknown.

Let me put it this way – if the world ever does go to complete pieces, I have a suicide plan. I’ve had said plan since somewhere in my early teens, since before my depression became something I was aware of and as something completely separate. On my self-destructive days, I’m fascinated by the idea of drowning. The end-of-the-world suicide plan? Completely different, and that’s all I’m gonna say.

I’ve watched a lot of post-apoc shows (it always seems to be TV shows for me, never books, that have the unpretty emotional impacts) and women like me never survive. At least, not in good condition or not for long. I’ve found most of my role models as an adult in that one little genre of media, but I’m not delusional. If shit happens, I’m not taking that risk.

I am not brave.

I used to think I was, when I was a little bug who didn’t have any idea where her life was headed. I think all kids have that delusion, but mine was less physically reckless than most. I wasn’t a risk-taker back then, just pretty convinced of my own awesomeness.

Then the Bad Thing happened, and then the horror of high school era, and then the emotional upheaval of my late teens. At that point in my life, bravery wasn’t a choice – it was a requirement, period. I was not allowed to fall down. I had to fight, if not for myself than for what would happen to my mother’s reputation if I fell. I had to fight because Good Girls don’t get their hearts broken (Good Girls don’t have hearts to break), Good Girls don’t want to die (Good Girls never get to live), Good Girls survive. And rebellious as I was, I wasn’t stupid.

But this last year or so, I’ve learned some unexpected things about myself, and one of the main ones is that I’m a pretty fricking terrible lone wolf. Sure, I’m great at isolation and barriers and all the stuff people do when they don’t want anyone to get close, but on my own? On my own, I’m borderline useless.

I am not brave. I am only a survivor because that is what has been required of me. It’s time for me to admit those things and move forward and continue finding my softness again.

And as for the nightmare, well… someday that’ll go away too.

Strange Hope

It’s amazing how frequently “I told myself no” turns into “look what I just did!!”. I get it, I really do – impulsiveness is a pretty common trait in directionless twentysomethings, and at least mine is pretty harmless. Except when it leads places. Like my current crisis – facing one of my great character flaws at the same time my life is going to pieces like it does every December.

In this case, the “I told myself no” act is watching emotionally compromising TV the week of IFTS. I’m not even gonna try to explain what that is because it’s a complicated nightmare of a thing, but the relevant details are that it’s a three-day charity sale during which I will have to tangle with almost everyone I have ever met in the Cincinnati area. Srsly. It’s practically tradition that someone I’m quite cool with not having seen in at least five years will turn up, and inevitably they will be in my line (I run a cash register for the whole thing because it’s a good reason to mark off work for three days and because I’m apparently way competent at rewiring that system) and inevitably they will realize they know me and it’s awkward at best. It’s also tradition that I will side-eye the heck out of various inevitability couples, small children, and… really everyone. I’m not a good person. IFTS brings out a lot of that.

So, the emotionally compromising TV thing. Last year was an accident. Last year involved something I was keeping up with at the time, and the ep that aired that week included (among other things) one of my favorites shooting her romantic partner in self-defense, the beautiful phenomenon of Promo Death Bait, and cannibalism set to the one Christmas carol I don’t actively hate. Really, there was no way I could’ve called that one, and yeah watching it on the first day of IFTS was a bad life choice but it was also a “I need to know what happened so I can appropriately deal with people in the tags” life choice. And an important lesson (or so I thought). Do not watch anything that will complicate my headspace during IFTS week. I repeated that on occasion over the entire last week, and I was doing So Well, and then last week happened and apparently I like shooting myself in the foot.

Honestly, I blame my friend Liv for this. Liv has been around for long enough to know what I’m into, and if she tells me I ought to watch something, she’s usually got a point. Current example – Jessica Jones, which I really didn’t plan on watching because… well, I got burnt out on superhero stuff. Not my angle at the moment. But Liv knows me better than I know myself, and she said it’s one of those weirdly cathartic shows, so I figured “okay, what the hell”. Never have I been so unprepared.

Yeah, the premise is intense (do your own research on that one because I can’t say anything here that hasn’t been said better by about half the internet, but basically the entire plot of the show is the title character dealing with Serious Issues and the show handles it spectacularly). I can deal with intense. I am not easily emotionally affected by things, and my thoughts on overall plot details amounted to “that’s pretty badass but not gonna do anything to me”. The subplot none of my darlings thought to warn me about, on the other hand… not so much.

Short and non-spoilery version – title character Jessica is an avid practitioner of about every slightly destructive coping mech one could ever think of, but one of her best is emotionally shutting herself off from everyone who even tries to take up space in her life. Everyone. Best friend, concerned neighbor, person she’s kinda in love with, everyone. And that hit me somewhere around ep 4 and it felt familiar in a way that very little in anything I’ve watched ever has. It hurt, because I know how that is, because I do that. And like most of my issues, and like the fictional darling who caused this personal crisis, I’m great at pretending I don’t. I’m great at pretending everything is fine, even when that’s total bullshit. I don’t let people in because I’m scared of what they might do to me if I give them space to wound. And then I lie to myself about it because what if I really am better off like this?

(I’m not. No one ever is.)

For me, media is best when it’s cathartic. Best when I’m forced to face my issues head-on and reassured that they won’t be the end of me. Because that’s the other thing that hit me about Jessica Jones – for being as dark a show as it is (and believe me, that’s an understatement at times), the ultimate message is surprisingly hopeful. “Yes, these things are real. Yes, they almost always happen to the undeserving. Yes, they leave scars. But it’s not the end of you. People can still want you despite your tragedies. You don’t have to be alone. You don’t deserve to be alone.”

Pretty good territory for a show about a woman on one of the most justified revenge quests in fictional history.

Just, y’know… maybe not the best timing for me to be watching it. But I’m a solid believer in the idea that I find stuff when I need it, and this one… I’m sure the timing will make sense eventually…

Looking For My Reflection

I’ve been having an interesting week as far as blog posts that haven’t quite happened.

First, I was going to write about how Mad Max: Fury Road affected me in ways that can be traced back to my background. (Give me isolated women getting the chance to do things for them and be human again and I will be all over it. Too much familiarity there.) This did not happen because that goes into the category of “I still know too many people who’d get ruffled by it and I have to play nice with most if not all of said people at a baby shower in two weeks and I don’t want them to hate me any more than they already do” posts. There are a lot of those. Maybe someday, if I get out of the Cincinnati area or learn a little more about healthy boundaries, some of those posts will happen… but not anytime soon.

Then I was going to do a post about how the Mortal Instruments series has really affected me over the years (yes, I am aware the woman who wrote those is a terrible human, but that’s still what got me through high school) and more specifically on the Survivor Story that occurs in the background. It’s almost funny because we are talking YA fantasy of the fun-BECAUSE-it’s-trashy species here, but there’s a subplot that’s resonated with me since I read the beginnings of it five years ago and is resonating really strongly again. It’s something of an anomaly in that the character in question is “older” (late thirties, though I wanna say an exact age was never quite established) and in that no one we are supposed to like treats her any differently once they learn what she’s been through. She’s not a victim so much as a good woman who’s been through hell and come out stronger yet not totally unchanged, and she has a small but beautiful support system. Her love interest is more aware of her story than anyone, and he admires her resilience while respecting her emotional scars. As subplot Survivor Stories go, it’s one of the most hopeful one I can think of. Yet obviously that post also did not happen.

Then I started thinking about the above two ideas while I was at work today and I realized some similarities between them – similarities that, as I pursued the idea further, are within every fictional lady I’ve ever identified with. Obviously, Survivor Stories – a term I use very broadly – are a common theme. I like certain plots, and I become way more interested in things when I learn they have my usual interests. But there’s something deeper here, something I think I knew before but I have words for it now. My favorite ladies are my favorites because I see my own story in them and, sometimes, I see hope.

I’ve always clung to books and TV shows for role models. When I was a little bug, I watched Beauty & The Beast so many times because I wanted to be Belle. (I still want to be Belle. In the end, she has a castle, an excellent wardrobe, an even more excellent library, and a broody but hot love interest – plus, she takes zero crap from anyone and has a kind heart and that is an unfortunately rare combination in human beings.) When I hit high school and it became apparent that I was going to have enough trouble finding flesh-and-blood humans I could be around for ten minutes without wanting to physically harm, let alone people I wanted to be like, the newly-glorious teen section at the library became my sanctuary and I found examples of the person I wanted to be. There were a few missteps along the way – perhaps the best story from my senior year of high school starts with me thinking that rereading Mockingjay was a good idea (it wasn’t) and ends with me nearly getting hit by a car – but I got lucky. I came of age right as YA dystopias were becoming a Thing, and that was just perfect timing for a fifteen-year-old girl whose interest in traditional femininity was somewhere in Antarctic climates. Sure, a lot of it was hard to transfer into my practical everyday life, but it was there.

Then, when I was about 18 (exact timing is hazy but I blame Tumblr for this), I discovered the wonderful world of TV. Before this point, my interest in visual media was nonexistent, but once it woke up, it divided into two categories – stuff I watched because it hit hard in places I knew all too well, and stuff that didn’t hit at all. The latter category has traditionally been a lot smaller no matter how hard I try to balance it. My investment level goes way up if I can relate, and even more so if the centerpoint of that relating hurts.

I’m drawn to things where I see my own experiences, and lately I’ve been even more drawn to things where I see where I want to be in the future. There’s not a lot of material on that side of things, not anywhere near enough stories told about women on the other side of hell, but I’m finding what I can. I’m looking for my reflection, and I’m finding my own strength along the way.